Court Rules in Favor of American Oversight in Trump Hotel Lawsuit

On Thursday evening, May 3, 2018, the Chief Judge of the D.C. District Court ruled in favor of American Oversight and eviscerated the Trump administration’s illegal and unprecedented efforts to conceal the Trump transition team’s communications about the Trump International Hotel. As the court wrote in the ruling, the administration was “just wrong.”

The General Services Administration (GSA) was ordered to turn over documents, remove redactions, and explain blatant contradictions in its affidavits. This is an important victory for transparency, the rule of law, and another example of how independent courts remain a critical bulwark against corruption.

Statement from Austin Evers, Executive Director of American Oversight:

“The Trump International Hotel is the centerpiece of the president’s corrupt mixing of business and public service. The public deserves to know the extent to which Trump’s earliest official acts as president-elect focused on protecting his empire from ethics rules. The administration fought to deny the public as much as possible, withholding email attachments, making bogus claims of attorney-client privilege, and failing to even search for calendar entries or phone records. That doesn’t fly. We’ll see the truth soon.”

American Oversight sued the GSA in June of 2017 to obtain communications between the Trump transition team and the GSA regarding the lease of the Trump International Hotel. The hotel is located in the Old Post Office building in Washington, DC, a taxpayer owned building that is managed by the GSA.

The initial, heavily-redacted documents released to American Oversight by GSA can be found here.